


there's a story at the bottom of this bottle

by stardustandswimmingpools



Category: Eyewitness (US TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Boys In Love, Canon Gay Relationship, Crying, Drinking, EXTREMELY drunk philip, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, I haven't updated my ao3 in awhile, I'm Sorry, I'm trying to think of more tags, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Philip's mom is better than the way I referred to her in this sorry, Underage Drinking, and I got sad never seeing new comments, at least I think there's canon divergence, drunk Philip, i wanna tag this well so no one is accidentally triggered, idk I wrote this some time ago, man i need to rewatch this show, or during episode 6, please keep in mind that the author has never been drunk, set after episode 6, so I decided to post something lol, this is actually kind of terrible, this is probably not accurate, validate me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 07:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8968552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustandswimmingpools/pseuds/stardustandswimmingpools
Summary: Only when Philip is drunk do all of his horrible secrets come out.





	

**Author's Note:**

> first off, I can't believe I used an All Time Low lyric for the title (Dear Maria, Count Me In - thx ATL for that classic)  
> also, I wrote this some time ago and I'm sure there are inaccuracies and general bad characterization so stick with me alright?? I'm trying  
> 1) this is _very_ angsty and there's like...drinking and stuff. **Please be safe! Don't read this if alcohol or references to child abuse could trigger you!**  
>  2) it has a nice-ish ending tho I think  
> 3) author has never been drunk and cannot guarantee the accuracy of this characterization sorry :/  
> 4) I haven't posted on ao3 in awhile and I missed the validation so I was like why the hell not  
> 5) I think it takes place during episode 6 or after episode 6 honestly I can't figure it out hhnmmm  
> I...think that's it! if you see any grammar/spelling/mechanics mistakes PLEASE TELL ME thanks enjoy!!!

He's so drunk that his vision is blurring, switching in and out of focus, and he stumbles backwards until his back is flat against the hay. He crumples.

Lukas walks inside, his eyebrows drawn together, looking blurry in Philip's screwy vision. He kneels over and grabs the bottle from Philip's hands. “Hey, are you okay?”

Philip blinks hazily up at Lukas's face, and the ice-colored hair falling around his face like a halo of sorts, and all the sharp edges that make his jaw so defined, and then his eyelids fall shut over his eyes and he swipes blindly and weakly for the bottle that's already been removed from his grip. “Gimme it back,” he mumbles, although it sounds a bit more like “g'me i' bah”, which isn't what he's trying to say at all.

“No way, man, Helen and Gabe are gonna find you out here and they're gonna be pissed,” Lukas says, almost worriedly. He sits back on his heels and puts his palm against Philip's flushed face, and he's so intoxicated that it's not even a rosy pink on his cheeks but a deep scarlet that spreads to his forehead and neck like a virus. “You look sick.”

“'M fine,” Philip insists, and with a great deal of effort he opens his eyes and squints viciously at the brightness of the swinging light fixtures overhead and the crack of daytime melting into night creeping under the barn door.

Lukas hesitates. “Well, let's get you back to your house, then.”

He stands up and tries to hoist Philip to his feet, wraps his arms around the other boy's waist, but Philip seems to have gained fifty pounds in getting wasted and is ostensibly immovable.

“I can't,” Philip says, suddenly wide-eyed and afraid.

“Can't what? Philip, it's getting dark, you have to go home,” Lukas says, with a glance towards the door.

“Go back.” Philip curls into himself and snakes his arms around his knees, which he hugs to his chest protectively. His chin rests between his knees and he looks deeply troubled. He is deeply troubled. There's always deep trouble. Inside his head, mostly.

“Philip, what's going on?” Lukas asks, grabbing his hand urgently. “Tell me, I want to help.”

Philip is dead silent for a moment, pondering in this, in how to explain a swirling vortex of chaos as if it's a black and white situation.

“I can hear them,” he settles on, and the second the words leave his mouth his bites down on his knee anxiously and his fingernails scratch a pattern onto his dry calves.

“What? Who? The killer?” Lukas presses, suddenly much more nervous in his tone.

“Yes. No,” Philip says, like it's clear what he means.

He pauses, then, reluctantly, says, “The killer. And other people.”

“Other people?”

Philip squeezes his eyes shut; he can still hear them now, yes, that's the one who always yelled for the slightest mistake and that's the big guy who killed their cat. Their voices are faded from the alcohol, dimmed to the backtrack of his mind but he can never fully ignore them and it drives him _insane_. He tucks his head between his knees and his chest and wishes he could drown them out, could drown them.

“My mom is a good person,” he mumbles against his hoodie.

“Uh, okay,” Lukas allows. “But who are the other people?”

“She didn't know they were bad guys, okay?” Philip says seriously, looking up, and suddenly it's so important that Lukas knows this, that Ann is a good mom and she would never purposely date anyone who would hurt him, _never_. Ann is the best person Philip knows. She just does bad stuff sometimes. “She didn't know, she didn't know. She never knew.”

“Hey, shh,” Lukas says, in a voice that's so calming it makes the voices in his head shut up a minute, which is such a nice feeling. Lukas's thumb wipes a tear tracking its way down Philip's cheek, though he doesn't recall having started to cry. “Philip, don't talk about this now. Go home, sleep, and we can talk in the morning, okay?”

“Do you believe me?” Philip asks severely. “Do you?”

“Yes, your mom is a good person,” Lukas answers quickly. “I know that, I met her.”

Philip exhales with difficulty, and then inhales with greater difficulty. “My mom dated this guy,” he tries to say. He knows his words might as well be spoken backwards for all the sense they might be making but he'll get this story out one way or another.

“A lot of them. A lot of guys. Bad guys. Not all bad. Some bad guys, though,” he says, and shudders. “Marv – March... Mark, his name was Mark, he found out I skipped school one day 'n' he – he killed our cat in front of me.”

Lukas stiffens and Philip slouches over himself. “His neck just...” He makes a cracking noise in the back of his throat and tears prick the corners of his eyes, and he feels them this time. “I loved that cat, Lukas. I loved him. He was so nice. He headbutted me a lot. Fluffy cat. 'S name was Aaron. I dunno why. I liked the name Aaron.”

“Philip...” Lukas whispers.

“Don't interrupt me!” Philip says angrily. “And the – this – another one – of the guys, he was named Dmitri. Bu' he...” He clears his throat, which feels heavily clogged up now, so no words can escape through his mouth. He groans.

“That's not the thing,” he says resignedly. Lukas looks lost, and Philip's vision is blurrier now for the tears coating his eyelashes.

“What's the thing?” Lukas prompts softly, anxiously. Like he doesn't want to know, but he needs to.

“The biggest guy – I mean the most angry guy, his name was – Evan. And.”

Philip buries his head in his hands like it's the end of the story, but he wants to tell the real end of the story. The alcohol is churning uneasily in his gut, but he can see the bottle of vodka just beside Lukas's right hand, so he snatches it up before Lukas can react and downs another gulp.

It burns his throat going down and makes him retch; he hates the taste, will always hate the taste. “Philip, stop drinking,” Lukas says seriously, and grabs the bottle and throws it across the barn. Philip shakes his head rapidly.

“Evan would, um...” Words still fail him so he lifts his hand up (it sways in the air) and then brings it back down onto his forearm with a slap.

Lukas's eyes widen. “He hit you?”

Philip nods, and then something in his chest breaks and he feels sobs rack his body like electric jolts. “Hey, hey, it's okay, he's gone,” Lukas says soothingly, and takes all of Philip's broken figure into his arms and holds him tight and kisses his forehead.

Philip shakes his head again, vigorously. “He always – wouldn't – I did stuff he – I didn't like him and I was a bad kid and he just – he always – on my back, with a, a ruler or his hand or anything,” he whimpers through hiccups that shake his body. “But I couldn't tell mom, she, she couldn't understand and if I did he was gonna kill me, he swore it.”

“Philip,” Lukas says quietly, but at a loss for words, he just hugs Philip tighter and holds the boy to his chest and wipes away the tears with his sleeve.

“He told my mom stuff that – things I didn't do,” Philip continues, swallowing thickly like there's a brick in his throat. “Made up stuff so I got in trouble. And I got in trouble, so I argued and told my mom I didn't, I didn't do any of it, and I _didn't_ kill the cat, but then he just...he would just...” Philip buries his face in Lukas's shoulder and cries silently, his breathing uneven and his hands shaking. “Every time,” he whispers hoarsely.

“Philip...” Lukas says slowly, pressing a kiss to his cheekbone. “Is this because I lied to Helen?”

Philip leans back, eyes shining with tears that collect on his eyelashes, and bites down on his lower lip. “I stopped arguing. If he told my mom I did something, then. I had done the thing.”

“Is this about me lying to Helen?” Lukas asks again.

“A little. Maybe.” Philip bites down harder on his lower lip.

Lukas's face gets all screwed up at that, and then he inhales deeply and says, “Philip, I...I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I...I'm sorry, I didn't – I shouldn't have –“

“What if they had just...” Philip says quietly, his voice barely above a whisper in the wind. “If they just hit me like Evan? Because I lied?”

“You didn't lie, Philip, I lied about you lying,” Lukas says desperately, “and I wish I hadn't, I'm so sorry, I came clean when I realized what I did but you didn't lie, it was me, Philip.”

Philip gives a shrug that only lifts one of his shoulders a bit. “What's the difference anymore? What did I do, what didn't I do...the...people say I did something and I just...” He shakes his head. To clear it, to get rid of everything that's coming off his chest now in waves. “I don't...I don't think that they – Helen and Gabe are nice. But if I lied, then...” He looks beseechingly at Lukas. “Then what if they hit me? I don't know.”

“They wouldn't,” Lukas promises immediately. “They're good people. I know it, I could tell the moment I met them. Gabe is cool, he likes you. And I...I think Helen likes you, too, even though she's never there – she's trying to solve this dumb cabin case.”

Philip presses his face into the crook of Lukas's neck and his eyes leave wet imprints on the boy's sweatshirt. “I know.”

“Philip, you need to go home.” It's a tentative statement because Philip doesn't want to leave, doesn't ever want to get up again – using his legs sounds so exhausting right now he could just sleep right here, in Lukas's arms, tears still sliding down his cheeks into the fabric of Lukas's shirt and onto Philip's chin.

“Lukas,” Philip says.

“Yes?” He sounds scared.

“Thank you.”

“Oh. Uh, you're welcome. Of course,” Lukas says, breathing out.

“Lukas.”

“Yes?”

“I love you.”

There's a longer pause than Philip wants and he doesn't even care – what can Lukas do that Philip hasn't already been through? – and then Lukas says, “You don't mean that.”

In the other boy's shirt, Philip's eyebrows draw together, puzzled. “Yes I do.”

“You're drunk.”

“So?”

“You need sleep.”

“Lukas, I'm serious. I love you. You – “ He pushes against Lukas's chest to pull away from his grip, and then clasps his hands together in a fist and presses it into his stomach. “You make it hurt right _here_.”

“What?” Lukas looks scared and confused and timid.

“Gabe says that's how you know you're in love.” He flexes his fingers. “It hurts in your stomach.”

“Why would that mean you're in love?”

Philip shrugs. “Gabe says so.”

“Well, Gabe's not the expert.”

“He's in love with Helen and that's what he felt,” Philip says. “Lukas.”

“Stop saying my name like that,” Lukas mutters.

“I love you,” Philip repeats. “I love you, alright? Even though I know I'm drunk, because my tongue feels like it's made of lead and every sound feels both amplified and distant, but I still love you, just like Mark still killed our cat and Evan still hit me.”

A sober kind of haze is floating over his incapacitated alcohol-logged body, and he ducks his head. “I need to go home.”

“Yeah,” Lukas says quietly.

With more effort than it should take to get up, Philip manages to stand, though he sways dangerously before Lukas's arm is wrapped around his waist and Philip's arm winds around the back of his neck. As they teeter and stumble toward the door of the barn, dead silence crushes the inside of Philip's head, and then Lukas stops short (almost causing Philip to fall forward) and says in a rush, “I love you too.”

Philip's shoulders lose their tension and his hand finds the one of Lukas's that's holding his waist, and when he gets to his front step, Lukas lets go and Philip catches himself on the front step.

“I'm gonna throw up; when I go inside,” Philip says matter-of-factly.

Lukas shifts on his feet, and then says, “Well, I'll – I'm sorry I lied and I – thank you for telling me that stuff in the barn. About your mom's boyfriends.”

Philip meets Lukas's eyes, and they aren't clouded over or hazy or scared. He tugs Lukas by the hem of his shirt and draws him down for a kiss, a chaste one so Philip can have the memory for the horrible night of tossing and turning he knows will come. “Thanks.”

Lukas hides a small smile as he turns and walks away, and Philip stumbles through his front door to the bathroom, where there's a good place to flush down the ugliness rising in his throat.

He falls back onto his mattress after the bathroom and yanks the blanket over him, and misses Lukas and remembers his kiss and thinks it's like a talisman. The voices in his head, for once, are sleeping too.

  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this! I appreciate it very much. also, how about that finale amirite???  
> anyway I am on tumblr at [@justcuzfandoms](http://justcuzfandoms.tumblr.com/) or [@vivilevone](http://vivilevone.tumblr.com/) so feel free to come and chat with me~ goodbye!


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